Friday, 30 May 2014

Scientists are genetically modifying
strawberries in order to allow them to resist freezing temperatures
better. They're doing it by artificial transfer of genes from a species
of fish called the Arctic Flounder Fish. The Arctic Flounder Fish
produces an anti-freeze that allows it to protect himself in freezing
waters.

They isolated the gene that produces this anti-freeze and introduced it
to the strawberry. The result is a strawberry that looks blue and
doesn't turn to mush or degrade after being placed in the freezer. While
they're not in production, research is ongoing. Let us know in the
comments, would you eat blue strawberries?

Sunday, 18 May 2014

Magnetars are the bizarre super-dense remnants of supernova explosions. They are the strongest magnets known in the Universe — millions of times more powerful than the strongest magnets on Earth. A team of European astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) now believe they’ve found the partner star of a magnetar for the first time. This discovery helps to explain how magnetars form — a conundrum dating back 35 years — and why this particular star didn’t collapse into a black hole as astronomers would expect. When a massive star collapses under its own gravity during a supernova explosion it forms either a neutron star or black hole. Magnetars are an unusual and very exotic form of neutron star. Like all of these strange objects they are tiny and extraordinarily dense — a teaspoon of neutron star material would have a mass of about a billion tonnes — but they also have extremely powerful magnetic fields. Magnetar surfaces release vast quantities of gamma rays when they undergo a sudden adjustment known as a starquake as a result of the huge stresses in their crusts.

The Westerlund 1 star cluster, located 16 000 light-years away in the southern constellation of Ara (the Altar), hosts one of the two dozen magnetars known in the Milky Way. It is called CXOU J164710.2-455216 and it has greatly puzzled astronomers.

“In our earlier work (eso1034) we showed that the magnetar in the cluster Westerlund 1 (eso0510) must have been born in the explosive death of a star about 40 times as massive as the Sun. But this presents its own problem, since stars this massive are expected to collapse to form black holes after their deaths, not neutron stars. We did not understand how it could have become a magnetar,” says Simon Clark, lead author of the paper reporting these results.

Astronomers proposed a solution to this mystery. They suggested that the magnetar formed through the interactions of two very massive stars orbiting one another in a binary system so compact that it would fit within the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. But, up to now, no companion star was detected at the location of the magnetar in Westerlund 1, so astronomers used the VLT to search for it in other parts of the cluster. They hunted for runaway stars — objects escaping the cluster at high velocities — that might have been kicked out of orbit by the supernova explosion that formed the magnetar. One star, known as Westerlund 1-5 , was found to be doing just that.

“Not only does this star have the high velocity expected if it is recoiling from a supernova explosion, but the combination of its low mass, high luminosity and carbon-rich composition appear impossible to replicate in a single star — a smoking gun that shows it must have originally formed with a binary companion,” adds Ben Ritchie (Open University), a co-author on the new paper.

This discovery allowed the astronomers to reconstruct the stellar life story that permitted the magnetar to form, in place of the expected black hole. In the first stage of this process, the more massive star of the pair begins to run out of fuel, transferring its outer layers to its less massive companion — which is destined to become the magnetar — causing it to rotate more and more quickly. This rapid rotation appears to be the essential ingredient in the formation of the magnetar’s ultra-strong magnetic field.

In the second stage, as a result of this mass transfer, the companion itself becomes so massive that it in turn sheds a large amount of its recently gained mass. Much of this mass is lost but some is passed back to the original star that we still see shining today as Westerlund 1-5.

“It is this process of swapping material that has imparted the unique chemical signature to Westerlund 1-5 and allowed the mass of its companion to shrink to low enough levels that a magnetar was born instead of a black hole — a game of stellar pass-the-parcel with cosmic consequences!” concludes team member Francisco Najarro (Centro de Astrobiología, Spain).

It seems that being a component of a double star may therefore be an essential ingredient in the recipe for forming a magnetar. The rapid rotation created by mass transfer between the two stars appears necessary to generate the ultra-strong magnetic field and then a second mass transfer phase allows the magnetar-to-be to slim down sufficiently so that it does not collapse into a black hole at the moment of its death.

The open cluster Westerlund 1 was discovered in 1961 from Australia by Swedish astronomer Bengt Westerlund, who later moved from there to become ESO Director in Chile (1970–74). This cluster is behind a huge interstellar cloud of gas and dust, which blocks most of its visible light. The dimming factor is more than 100 000, and this is why it has taken so long to uncover the true nature of this particular cluster.

Westerlund 1 is a unique natural laboratory for the study of extreme stellar physics, helping astronomers to find out how the most massive stars in the Milky Way live and die. From their observations, the astronomers conclude that this extreme cluster most probably contains no less than 100 000 times the mass of the Sun, and all of its stars are located within a region less than 6 light-years across. Westerlund 1 thus appears to be the most massive compact young cluster yet identified in the Milky Way galaxy.

All the stars so far analysed in Westerlund 1 have masses at least 30–40 times that of the Sun. Because such stars have a rather short life — astronomically speaking — Westerlund 1 must be very young. The astronomers determine an age somewhere between 3.5 and 5 million years. So, Westerlund 1 is clearly a newborn cluster in our galaxy.

The team is composed of Simon Clark and Ben Ritchie (The Open University, UK), Francisco Najarro (Centro de Astrobiología, Spain), Norbert Langer (Universität Bonn, Germany, and Universiteit Utrecht, the Netherlands) and Ignacio Negueruela (Universidad de Alicante, Spain).

The astronomers used the FLAMES instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope at Paranal, Chile to study the stars in the Westerlund 1 cluster.

Sunday, 11 May 2014

Atmospheric sprites have been known for nearly a century, but their origins were a mystery. Now, a team of researchers has evidence that sprites form at plasma irregularities and may be useful in remote sensing of the lower ionosphere. "We are trying to understand the origins of this phenomenon," said Victor Pasko, professor of electrical engineering, Penn State. "We would like to know how sprites are initiated and how they develop." Sprites are an optical phenomenon that occur above thunderstorms in the D region of the ionosphere, the area of the atmosphere just above the dense lower atmosphere, about 37 to 56 miles above the Earth. The ionosphere is important because it facilitates the long distance radio communication and any disturbances in the ionosphere can affect radio transmission.

Sunday, 4 May 2014

Observations from ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have, for the first time, determined the rotation rate of an exoplanet. Beta Pictoris b has been found to have a day that lasts only eight hours. This is much quicker than any planet in the Solar System — its equator is moving at almost 100 000 kilometres per hour. This new result extends the relation between mass and rotation seen in the Solar System to exoplanets. Similar techniques will allow astronomers to map exoplanets in detail in the future with the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). Exoplanet Beta Pictoris b orbits the naked-eye star Beta Pictoris, which lies about 63 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Pictor (The Painter’s Easel). This planet was discovered nearly six years ago and was one of the first exoplanets to be directly imaged. It orbits its host star at a distance of only eight times the Earth-Sun distance (eso1024) — making it the closest exoplanet to its star ever to be directly imaged.

Friday, 2 May 2014

The disease, known to doctors as fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP), is better known as Stone Man Syndrome. It’s a condition that causes the body’s repair mechanism to malfunction. When tissue (muscle, tendons, ligaments) is damaged, it undergoes ossification for sufferers of this disease.

Early symptoms come in childhood. Misshapen toes, swelling that appears and quickly disappears, and difficult use of joints are red flags. From there, things set about on a downward course. Victims of Stone Man Syndrome continue to grow new bones within their bodies, some of which attach themselves to the original skeleton. Ultimately, the addition of new bone makes it nearly impossible to move.

Fortunately, it’s very rare. Only about one in every 2 million people lives with it. The International Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva Association is dedicated to informing the public about Stone Man Syndrome. One of the problems with rare diseases is that they are difficult to diagnose, and so people often go without seeking treatment, if anything is available.

Over 500 people with this condition have offered up blood, DNA, and tooth samples. By studying those things, scientists hope to make breakthroughs and change the lives of people who live with FOP for the better.

The
disease, known to doctors as fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva
(FOP), is better known as Stone Man Syndrome. It’s a condition that
causes the body’s repair mechanism to malfunction. When tissue (muscle,
tendons, ligaments) is damaged, it undergoes ossification for sufferers
of this disease.
Early symptoms come in childhood. Misshapen toes, swelling that appears
and quickly disappears, and difficult use of joints are red flags. From
there, things set about on a downward course. Victims of Stone Man
Syndrome continue to grow new bones within their bodies, some of which
attach themselves to the original skeleton. Ultimately, the addition of
new bone makes it nearly impossible to move.
Fortunately, it’s very rare. Only about one in every 2 million people
lives with it. The International Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva
Association is dedicated to informing the public about Stone Man
Syndrome. One of the problems with rare diseases is that they are
difficult to diagnose, and so people often go without seeking treatment,
if anything is available.
Over 500 people with this condition have offered up blood, DNA, and
tooth samples. By studying those things, scientists hope to make
breakthroughs and change the lives of people who live with FOP for the
better.